No.

I WILL excuse her actions.

She was a mentally ill child, brainwashed and groomed by her abusive father into being a perfect child soldier who he SENT OUT INTO ACTIVE COMBAT ZONES, she was neglected and dismissed by her mother, and ignored entirely by her uncle. She was FOURTEEN during the events of the story and based on everything she'd ever been taught by the only adults in her life that paid her any attention, she was doing the right things.

Were her actions wrong? By and large yes, of course. But can she be held responsible for them in the same way an adult who had been adequately taught right from wrong can? Fuck no.

For a long time I’ve had really really mixed feelings about her. She’s a kid, only 13 years old, and was abused by Ozai just like zuko was. Only in a different way. She’s a victim in her own right, the show makes that more than clear with her and Zuko’s final battle. It’s a tragedy that these two are fighting, not a triumph like the airship battle or the battle between Ozai and Aang.

But also.... she’s toxic. She controls people by fear, even her friends are terrified of her. She smiles when Zuko’s burned, and she suggests destroying the earth kingdom. She tries again and again to kill zuko. I never thought it was really her fault or who she really is, but I also thought she was just too far gone. that her mind had been too poisoned by Ozai and that she was by that point just a tragic image of what could have happened to zuko

Even saying that, I really wanted her to be redeemed. I’d read some fics with it but it never felt quite right or in character. I thought she was just too far gone to be redeemed

And then I rewatched the finale

And honestly.... I’m realizing I was wrong about her

I think that there are kinda a lot of misconceptions about Azula. In part bc the fandom in general is..... not really nice to her. Which I get!! Her character and the abuse she went through is even more complex then Zuko’s (which is saying a lot). The show focuses almost exclusively on her toxic side, and we don’t really see the more hurt/broken side of her until literally the final episode. Plus we don’t really see who she was before Ozai’s influence like we do with Zuko.

All of which is an unfortunate consequence of a real redemption arc being planned for her and then later cut for time.

So bc of all that her character is really really complex. And I think that with how difficult she is to understand + consuming fan content with how a lot of ppl misinterpret her, she ends up becoming a straight villain like Ozai in most people’s mind’s

Which, again, I don’t blame ppl for. I had the same mindset for a long time

And it’s easier that way. In order to understand her you need to put a lot of energy into trying, and most ppl don’t want to. And I don’t blame them. Azula as she is in the show is incredibly difficult to like

But I think if you do take a look, specifically at the things she says in the final episodes, you’ll see that deep down she’s just a scared kid. A lot like zuko.

If you look closely at Azula everything she does is motivated by fear. Fear others have for her and fear she has of her father

Azula is terrified of their father. In a way I don’t think zuko even is. Because he at some points wants their father’s love but Azula never seems to want that. His favor, yes, but never love

There’s a handful of scenes during the Sozin’s comet 4-parter that I think explain who Azula really is.

First, when Ozai starts to tell her she’s being left behind on the day of Sozin’s comet she panics. She’s terrified that she did something to lose her father’s favor, and starts desperately explaining why she still deserves it

And she says something insanely revealing. “You can’t treat me like zuko”

And I think that explains so much about her relationship to zuko. She grew up seeing how much her father hurt him. And she was so terrified of her father.... she didn’t want that to happen to herself

So she had two options. Be “weak” like zuko, or hurt him to gain Ozai’s favor and protect herself. I think it’s pretty clear what she did.... though I can’t really blame her. She was a scared kid trying to survive.

The whole reason the two of them have such a bad relationship is because she wouldn’t let them have a good one. She couldn’t let them have a good relationship, not if she wanted to survive living with their father

And when I say survive, I mean it. Azula does not love him or follow him out of a sense of duty like zuko. She relizes way earlier than zuko does that Ozai is a cruel horrible person. Everything she does is an attempt to not get on his bad side.

She literally says to the hallucination of their mother that the only thing that can control people is fear. And there is only one person who Azula will listen too. Her dad is the only one to have any control over her because he is the only person she is afraid of

And Azula doesn’t like doing this. She doesn’t enjoy being cruel. She convinces herself that she does, because if she acted differently she’d lose their father’s favor

How do I know? Literally look at the whole deal with her and Ursa. Azula knows Ursa was uncomfortable and unsettled when she started acting like Ozai. she kept doing it to protect herself, but when she talks about how her mother “thought she was a monster” she clearly hates herself for it.

She doesn’t want to act like this. She does it to protect herself. And then she justifies it again and again and again because she knows it’s wrong but she wants to be right. she wants to be good

She tells herself she has to treat zuko badly because he is bad at everything. That he deserves all the things that happened to him bc he isn’t worthy, or he’s untalented, or he’s a traitor, or he’s weak, or whatever.

She tells herself that she can’t have friends. That the only way she can control people is by making them fear her. That if they fear her, like how she fears her father, then they can’t betray her

She tells herself that love and kindness are weak, and that the only way to survive is to be cruel and ruthless

She makes herself believe all that BS and completely internalized it, all to seem strong to her father. All because she’s afraid of him.

And the second that those beliefs, beliefs that have kept her safe from her father’s wrath, are challenged, she snappes. Because mai and ty lee aren’t scared enough of her. They betrayed her.

She’s not terrifying enough to be safe. She’s not terrifying enough that people won’t hurt her. If they’re not afraid of her, then they’re going to hurt her.

She slowly unravels through the final episodes. She’s convinced everyone in the palace is trying to hurt her, because she’s not terrifying enough to be invincible.

And she’s struggling. She’s confused. Because if fear isn’t keeping her safe, then what was the point of all this? If it’s not keeping her safe, then turning into a monster that her mother hates was for nothing

But also.... maybe she was just weak. Maybe she just needed to be stronger, crueler.

And the whole time she’s walking on ice. Terrified of her servants and the dai lee and lee and lo. But she needs to keep her composure, needs to pretend every thing is fine.

Because she is so, so much more terrified of her father. Terrified she’s not composed enough, not cruel enough, not strong enough for him not to hurt her

So. Yeah. Sorry for the angst. But.... Azula is a very complex character. And most people try to just turn her into Ozai jr and... she’s not. She’s pretending she is, so well that she’s convinced even herself